


The Fall

by One_Chicago_Fanfiction



Category: Chicago Med, Chicago PD
Genre: Exhausted Jay, Overworked Jay, Will calling the shots, Will is a worried older brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:07:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23930533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/One_Chicago_Fanfiction/pseuds/One_Chicago_Fanfiction
Summary: Jay's big heart gets him in trouble when he works overtime on a difficult case. After yet another sleepless night piecing leads together, Jay collapses in front of his colleagues.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 110





	The Fall

He’s just a little tired. That’s what Jay tells himself as he works through the night once again, surviving only on black coffee and his own desperation to solve the complicated case the unit have been embroiled in for the last week. Drugs, dead kids, dealers in the wind, connections to local, well established businesses. Someone screwed up somewhere and a child stumbled across some of these drugs, was fighting for his life in the hospital. So Jay tells himself he wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway, and downs the last of another coffee. 

He blinks at the glare of the computer screen, waits for the words to right themselves before his blurred vision. He scribbles notes, fights to find links, connections out of city or out of state—anything to tell him where the dealers, the parents of the kid might be, because they sure as hell aren’t by their son’s hospital bed. 

It’s morning before he knows it, and once again he feels like the night was almost for nothing. He found a possible link between one of the dealers and an old high school friend somewhere deep in the city, but that was about it. 

“You sleep here, man?” Kevin asks, first to the bullpen. Jay shakes his head.

“Didn’t sleep,” he says, hands wrapped around his cup, not as the warmth comforting as he’d hoped it would be. By the time the rest of the unit arrive, Jay’s at the whiteboard, pen in hand, ready to present the latest meagre findings, the smallest possible leads, to update them on the kid’s condition as it stood when he called to check on him that morning. He’s pretty sure Voight’s gonna send him home early today, and he’s already decided that home isn’t where he’s going if that happens. There’s no one by that kid’s bed, no one but doctors and nurses, people there to do their job and move onto the next patient. Jay feels it in his bones that the kid deserves someone who’s not just there and then gone. He’ll pull up a chair by the bed and stay there all day if he has to, all night. 

And then it happens. He’s halfway through listing all the information he’s got to give when he stumbles over his words, suddenly lightheaded.

“Jay?” Hailey says, on her feet in an instant. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Jay tells her, waving his hand dismissively. “I-I’m fine. What was I saying?”

“Sit down, man,” Adam tells him, rising to his feet and moving towards Jay. Jay makes a face as he pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to wave Adam away, blood rushing through his head like he just stood up too quickly. 

“I’m okay,” he says again, voice weaker this time. 

And then he’s down. Everything falls to black around him.

When he opens his eyes, he doesn’t remember it, doesn’t remember the fall. All he knows is he must have fallen, that he wasn’t on the ground a second ago, that Adam has one hand under his head and the other on his arm, Hailey’s voice in the background, Voight’s cutting through the air like a blade, but Jay can’t make out the words.

“What happened?” He rasps.

“I got you,” Adam says. “It’s okay.” Jay pulls away from Adam, just a little, just enough to pull himself up enough that he’s practically sitting upright. He brings a hand to his head and remembers the blood rush, the desperate feeling that of his body careening from his own control. 

“What happened?” He asks again.

“You collapsed, Jay,” Adam tells him. “I caught you. I don’t think think you’re hurt. Are you hurt?” Jay shakes his head. There’s a gentle sort of desperation to Adam in that moment, that Jay’s only aware of in the abstract, like he’s looking at this moment from outside of himself. It’s a sickly, dizzying feeling, and it takes him a moment to realise Adam is rubbing Jay’s arm gently, comforting him. “You’re okay. We got you. Don’t try to get up, okay?”

“Come on,” Jay scoffs. “I’m not…I’m fine.”

“Hey,” Adam says, “it’s okay. Look.” He lowers himself a little closer to the ground, sits there with Jay on the cold hard floor and gives him a forced smile that doesn’t hide his concern. “Now we’re both on the ground, okay?” And Jay doesn’t like the way they’re all looking at him, but he has to admit it’s a little easier to take with Adam by his side on the floor.

“Give them some room,” Voight says. 

“Just stay right there,” Kev says, and Hailey backs him up.

“Yeah,” she says. “Will’s on his way. He’s gonna check you over.”

“You called my brother?” Jay says, and tries once more to pull himself up, but his legs are weak and shaky and his heart pounds so hard that he’s sweating.  
“Just to be safe,” Voight says, pressing a glass of water into Adam’s hand. Adam hands it to Jay, who drinks the cool liquid down and instantly feels a little better, a little more human again. 

“Don’t move too much,” Adam tells him. “Just stay there til Will gets here, alright? Then you can bust our balls for this all you want. Once a doctor says you’re okay.”

“Fine,” Jay says, then takes the sting out of his voice. “Okay. Yeah. Thanks..”

Jay’s still on the floor when Will gets there, striding through the bullpen looking very much like a frightened brother, and not very much like a doctor. 

“Jay,” he says, and the worry in his voice twists Jay’s heart in his chest, guilt shifting through him.

“I’m okay,” Jay says. 

“What happened?” Will kneels down beside him, taking Adam’s place at his side, medical bag at the ready. 

“He fainted,” says practically everyone, practically in unison, all eyes on the Halstead brothers.

“Okay,” Will says, then looks Jay dead in the eye. “What caused it? Do you know?”

“I’m clocking a lot of hours,” Jay shakes his head. “I’m just tired. That’s all.”  
“You’re off the case,” Will says, and at the awkward silence that fills the room, he turns to Voight and clears his throat. “I mean, as a doctor it’s my recommendation that he’s sent home and instructed to stay there. I know how stubborn my brother can be. Do whatever you have to do to keep him at home. He needs rest.”

“Stubbornness runs in the family,” Jay mutters, rubbing at his forehead as Will helps him to his feet.

“I’ll drive you home,” Will says. “You’re gonna spend the day sleeping. Resting, Jay. Resting, getting some fluids in you that aren’t caffienated. You’re gonna get a call from me every few hours to check in, and your sergeant’s gonna call me if you try to go anywhere near this case again before I sign you off, as your doctor.”

“Sure,” Jay says, “as a doctor.”

“You’re welcome,” says Will, “you ass.”

Jay rolls his eyes and as awful as he feels, as drained, as hollowed out, he has to mask a smile. His worried colleagues, his overprotective brother. He’s lucky, he guesses. At least he has people around him in a moment of crisis. At least he’s never alone in anything.

In the car, he takes a deep breath and turns to look at Will. 

“Hey, do me a favour, will you?” He asks, and Will glances at him.

“What’s that?”

“The case I’m working on,” he says. “The case I’m not working on today. There’s a kid mixed up in the middle of it—just a little kid. He’s alone in there, man. In the hospital.”

“Parents?” Will asks, and Jay sighs.

“Don’t ask.”

“Okay, then,” Will says. “Give me a name and I’ll check on him. I’ll make sure he’s not alone for long.”

“Thanks, man,” Jay says, and falls asleep in Will’s car before they even make it back to his apartment.


End file.
